Developing a Fixation

by Phil West

The upcoming Unclean Records compilation, Beginning of the End Again, is well put together and places the 16 featured bands in a logical series of relatively clean segues. Yet, the bands are so drastically different from one another that it's hard to discern what they have in common besides their shared Austin-San Antonio axis. For Unclean founder and rabid-local music fan Roger Morgan, it boils down to one correct, shared attitude.

"For all purposes, we're a punk rock label," says Morgan. "We couldn't really come in, scout out Antone's [night club], and find ourselves a blues band. We do have Blind Willie's Johnson, but they're a punk blues band, noisier and snottier than that other crowd. I could see us eventually doing a country act, but," he smiles, "it'd have to be a snottier country act."

Unclean has been, to this point, a local label: 17 of its 18 listed roster bands hail from Central Texas, with Boston-based Dumptruck the only geographical anomaly. It's also a labor of love: Morgan, his wife Margie, and friend Dino Reyes assuredly point out they're "not getting rich" from Unclean. They pump any profit back into their record-releasing hobby, and run the label from a room in the Morgan's tidy brick house in Austin's Hyde Park neighborhood.

It started a dozen years ago in Boulder, Colorado, as the business arm of Morgan's punk rock band, the Lepers. Although Morgan hasn't played in years, moving to Oklahoma before settling in Austin in 1986, he always had it in the back of his head to continue the label. And when the Morgans started attending shows in earnest in 1992, they found themselves amazed by the quality and diversity of the scene. What started the revitalization of Unclean was the same process the label goes through in selecting new bands now: discovery, falling in love, and developing a fixation. "When I see a band and I know I want to put their record out, it becomes a sort of weird obsession for me," says Morgan. "I have to do it or it's really depressing for me. I get this really worked-up mentality over it."

So far, Unclean has concentrated on
7-inch releases from a slew of local, influential bands: the blurry and psychedelic Flying Saucers, the noisy and chaotic Glorium, and the straight-ahead, punk-rocking Inhalants - to name only a few. Although the roster is large, many of the bands aren't beholden to Unclean and have done releases on other local or national labels. Morgan doesn't feel any bitterness about this; in fact, up until last year, Unclean used its connections and national distributor Dutch East India Trading to help smaller local labels get their records out to a larger public.

"We've talked to some other local labels at various times about setting up a more autonomous Austin distribution network," says Morgan, "to help push the Austin phenomenon, if you want to call it that. We've learned so much already from doing it for a few years."

"I really believe this is the best Austin scene we've had yet," agrees Reyes. "A lot of people talk about the glory days in the early Eighties with the Reivers and Bad Mutha Goose. But there [are] more bands, more labels, and more camaraderie now. It's better in every sense."

One thing that separates Unclean from other Austin labels is their support of San Antonio's scene. They note that there's a traditional rivalry between the two cities, but Reyes, who also acts as the de facto manager of San Antonio's garage-terrorists the Sons of Hercules, feels the Sons have helped to unify the Austin cluster of garage bands with their energy, spirit, and frequent forays into Austin clubs.

Because of their reputation and diverse roster, Unclean gets a daily flood of demo tapes. But they actually approach the task of listening to unsolicited tapes cheerfully - they're the type of label that believes in keeping their ears and minds open. "A lot of people just go to shows here to have a good time," explains Reyes, "but if more people listened really carefully, they would have no choice but to start their own record labels, and put some of these bands out. It's exciting to see what's happening with all these bands who grew up on MTV 10 years ago, who saw that music can be what you want it to be." Reyes goes on to mention Billy Idol and Prince before Morgan shakes his head and stops him. "Dino," Morgan said. "Half our bands would kill you if they could hear you now."